I have been reading the column he is writing, and some of the commentary it is generating in the OSR blogosphere, I have even commented a little bit about some of it myself. I suspect it isn't just Mr. Mearls, but also the rest of the design team behind 5th Edition D&D, or D&D Next, as they think the cool kids are calling it. I reached this inescapable conclusion when I went back and examined the evidence- Mr. Mearls is playing B/X D&D, ostensibly to establish a baseline, but really because it is the best selling D&D ever, so marketing has got to be involved here. Anyway, he keeps wanting to tweak the system. I guess that's cool, we all use house rules, right? But he wants to test the system to destruction and rebuild it (again) anew, and that's not cool, that's what people who hate D&D want to do. I know, I have played D&D with people that HATE D&D a whole bunch of times over the course of my decades of gaming.
I have seen it coming from both sides too, D&D is too abstract and needs to be made more "realistic", with hit locations, a variety of skills, and what-not. D&D is too rules bound, it needs to be more like, name your favorite rules-lite system, this is usually leveled at AD&D when you add in all the extra books or 2nd edition once the splatbook frenzy started or 3e almost from the get go. I have seen the madness of rules breakers that try and smash the system so they can make a better system and it isn't pretty; but at least they were all honest about the fact that they hated D&D. Mike Mearls claims to love D&D. I can't see any evidence that he ever loved any pre-WotC version of D&D, he is apparently only playing it in protest trying to figure out what it's ancient arcane mystique was that held so many of us enthralled for so long.
Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that the 1981 Moldvay/Cook B/X edition of D&D doesn't have room for improvement, in thirty-one years the state of the art has moved forward a bit and we can too. AD&D, both 1st and 2nd editions had some good stuff, yes, even in the splatbooks. 3e made some good design decisions too, along with a few that I would have liked to have seen be optional, and a bunch of stuff I thought was bad. I am almost completely unfamiliar with 4th edition D&D, so I have to refrain from comment, either positive or negative, except to say that I am sure that something good must be hidden inside.
Now, I was against what Mike wanted to do to with Save or Die effects, but I assumed it was a sop to the people that were raised on the somewhat more sissified style of 3rd and 4th edition D&D gaming where every character created is a special snowflake and it would just break you player's heart to see him or her die, especially in an unheroic manner; and it might just break your precious story train off the rails if one of the all important PCs died at the wrong time. Different style of gaming, vastly more time invested in character creation, sure, I get it, all the PCs are tanks and I am an old man saying "Back in my day...."; but back in my day we did have good stories for our characters, they just developed over time. We also had a real sense of accomplishment when we leveled up, because it didn't happen every time we played, and there was a real chance that some of our PCs weren't making it back every single time we went adventuring*.
But I digress, this week Mike moved on to fixing problems that don't even exist in B/X D&D, namely the Turn Undead ability of the Cleric. I can not even fathom what his problem with this ability is, except the whole lack of defined parameters for how long various undead remain turned and how far they have to run. Honestly EGG already answered most of the questions he has in in 1st edition AD&D, and a few others too. Anything else he wants to do I guess can be a simple house rule, it doesn't have to be made "official" D&D Next/5th edition; if you want free willed bad-ass Undead to just hover around menacingly once they've been turned like Vampires in a Hammer horror film, I am cool with that, really, but that's your game, and maybe mine, it doesn't need to be everyone's. He wants to plant all of this stuff in a stat block for each Undead monster, I feel this would unnecessarily clutter the game with stat blocks, so I'd rather prefer to leave it on the simple Turn Undead chart as a footnote, like on the 1st edition AD&D DM's Screen. He claims he doesn't want the Turn Undead ability to be an "I win" button for Clerics or a Fireball tuned specifically to the undead**, because B/X Clerics are too tough? Turn Undead is the only thing they have going for them at first level. They don't get a Spell, they have a D6 for Hit Points and are limited to weapons that do 1d6 Damage, they might have a good AC if they rolled good starting money.
Of course I don't really buy into the idea that he is all that invested in trying out B/X at all given that he is talking about Turn Undead being done using a Charisma Check with a DC and the area of effect being a 30' cone, that all smacks of 3e to me and that's the D&D I divorced. My guess is that if Mike Mearls or Monte Cook or anyone else on the 5th Edition Design Team wants to know what old school D&D was and is like, they should quit DMing and start playing some D&D using these old rules, with an old school DM. There are still some around. They might just find out that they like the game and that returning it to it's roots with some of the thirty-one years of game design innovation is cool, but I am still not cool with the market department deciding things like how often characters should level.
*It's worth mentioning here, as was recently pointed out at Tenkar's Tavern, D&D was originally published as a wargame. You sometimes get attached to certain units in wargames, particularly if they have a campaign play option, but it's kind of silly to mourn the loss of the Grossdeutschland division counter for too long. Yes, I picked that one on purpose because my wife mocks me for mourning it's loss during a drive on Moscow. They had performed so well, they were my lucky unit.
**Of course then he goes a little farther off the reservation when he starts talking about Evil Clerics and them just gaining abilities from other planar creatures, so I guess Carcosa has left it's mark on Mike Mearls. I can't decide if the addition of crazy new abilities to track is worth the bonus points for pissing off the religious right and maybe putting D&D's name back on the radar, so kudos to Mr. Mearls on the addition of Evil PCs and them getting extra special bonus abilities right out of the gate. I didn't see anything special for Good Clerics mentioned, even though an equal and opposite type of ritual ability gain should be possible through contracts with higher planar beings and divine rituals.
First, I learned years ago that Mike Mearls doesn't really 'get' old-school D&D.
ReplyDeleteSecond, you're absolutely right that gamers who don't like D&D are the very last people who should be put in charge of making it a better game. So often they are blind to what works and why, solving problems that very few gamers actually have.
the somewhat more sissified style of 3rd and 4th edition D&D gaming where every character created is a special snowflake and it would just break you player's heart to see him or her die
ReplyDeleteYou have a way with words that always makes me smile!
It's funny, I have always had exactly the opposite impression of Mr. Mearls. He seems very knowledgeable about OD&D (he used to post on the OD&D Discussion forums) and I read somewhere that he uses AD&D for his own campaign. Whenever he discusses game elements, he almost always brings up the old school perspective, even if he doesn't label it as such.
ReplyDeleteHe's just a guy in a tough position that is trying to find a way to make some very disparate communities happy with the same thing. It's going to be difficult to find compromises that work.
I'm totally with you on this turn undead "solution" though. If the answer is "you need to add another field to every undead monster stat block," then I think you're probably asking the wrong question.
2E was actually the edition that was terrified of the satanic panic and the religious right. That was the edition that renamed the devils and demons to nonsense words and took out the demon princes entirely. One of the best things that WotC did with the D&D property when they acquired it (and I don't think they did many positive things) was to get a spine back regarding things like the demons. They even published The Book of Vile Darkness, which then got a remake for 4E too:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/34416000
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20111114
I've been reading Mr Mearls' design essays, looked at his product, and exchanged posts with him at EN World for years now, and from that I've come to the firm conclusion that Mr Mearls has a poor grasp of how the early editions of D&D actually work, which I see reflected in his constant fiddling. He sees stuff as broken and in need of repair that actually works just fine, and often even elegantly, if he understood them.
DeleteI have to admit, I didn't read everything Mike Mearls ever wrote before I came to this conclusion, but I did just spend a long time wading through everything in his blog and everything on the WotC site he has written and, while he seems nostalgic for early editions occasionally, I think he may just be saying that to build up his old school street cred. Reading his blog, he says he plays AD&D at home, but pretty much everything he writes about is a 4th edition play report. He wrote about how, back in the day, he played AD&D PCs with OD&D and B/X rules and a lot of DM fiat, like a lot of us did back in the day; but then he mentions that he was 14 years old when 2nd edition came out, and how he didn't really like 2nd edition, but never really gave it a chance either, since he already had all the 1st edition books and was kind of done with D&D anyway. I have to call shenanigans, I DMed that way when I was 14 years old in 1983. He was about done with D&D when he was 14 in 1989? He missed the wave for OD&D, so did I, but he missed it by a long shot. When I got into D&D as a preteen you could still find some OD&D stuff in stores, did he get his from an older relative or a fairy godmother? He missed the B/X boat too, but I'll give him the benefit of doubt on that one, since those boxed sets were ubiquitous back in the early 1980s. But he must have been a D&D gaming wunderkind to have the kind of experience, at his age that he claims to have had, and I think that I have to agree that he doesn't really get how early editions work.
DeleteOne of the things that will be really hard for D&D Next (or whatever) to handle will be the variance between fast/easy to create PCs (OD&D/1E/2E) and masterpieces that can take hours. Nobody is willing to try and create a pathfinder character at the gaming table, whereas that actually happened in AD&D.
ReplyDeleteYou kind of have to pick one; and the inclusion of things like feats, a complex skill system, powers, and prestige/advanced classes make it a lot longer to create an effective character.
You also have scaling issues. Power level rose a lot faster in 3E than 1E/2E, making a mixed level party a lot less fun.
I am dubious that you can design a system where the complexity of character creation can really vary that much. This feeds into questions like "aave or die" at a really fundamental level. Ditto with turn undead -- if the undead is a vampire and characters are desperately trying to run (it drains **TWO** levels per hit) then the ability to risk being killed by standing there and turning it is a point of dramatic tension, not an "I win" button.
I think there is an obvious way to finesse the character build vs. easy chargen issue: make most of the options available during level up rather than chargen time, and have guidelines for starting out at higher level. 2E did this with Dark Sun actually by starting PCs at third level. Make feats and powers something that you have to choose instead of things like extra spells or base attack bonus bump.
DeleteFrom playing a 4E game, a first level 4E PC feels about equivalent to a 4th to 6th level B/X character anyways, from number of abilities to quantity of HP.
It also seems to me that there is a relatively easy solution to the save or die and level drain problems. Offer an easy mode and a hard mode for some monster abilities (e.g., ability score drain vs. level drain). Then people can pick whatever they think is appropriate for their campaign. Along with a few paragraphs in the DMG explaining the pros and cons of each approach, I think that would work very well. Lethality should be a dial that is easy to shift up or down if they want this new game to be playable by both new school and old school players.
For what it's worth, I have always hated the Energy Drain mechanic, that's something from D&D's older editions that I can be happy to see fixed away. Just off the top of my head I could house rule a Vampire to doing something like, when it hits you save vs. paralysis or maybe spell and if you fail take 2d6 points of Constitution loss/round until you make your save and break free or hit 0 Constitution and die (to rise again as a Vampire). That would represent the Vampire grabbing hold of a PC and biting and draining blood, it certainly fits the image of the Vampire better than a "touch of negative energy attack".
DeleteI like energy drain, but I agree it does not fit vampires very well. Constitution drain is better for vampires, but for wraiths and similar undead I still prefer level drain.
DeleteYou know, I was thinking about Wraiths and Wights level drain too when I wrote this and I think the same rule could work for them with just a different cosmetic effect, actually losing the Constitution points due to contact with negative energy. I have never really liked the idea of sucking away experience points and level loss, it's either book keeping intensive or hand-waved to make it kind of right.
DeleteI think the time to create a character is a function of the number of options; I agree with you that complexity doesn't rise so much in actual play with 4E characters once they are created. It's picking between the sheer number of powers that daunted me.
DeleteIn terms of energy drain, it is a much less fiddly mechanic if characters delevel in a rather simple fashion. But the switch to constitution drain is a pretty decent alternative. What is harder is to balance this with spells that instantly restore lost attribute points. I have 13th level characters in my Pathfinder game, now, and not even death (as a condition) notably slows them down. Ability loss is only important to the combat it happens in and not even often then.
"I didn't see anything special for Good Clerics mentioned, even though an equal and opposite type of ritual ability gain should be possible through contracts with higher planar beings and divine rituals."
ReplyDeleteWhy?
Who says good and evil need to be balanced with game mechanics like that?
(of course, I used to play Rifts, where an adventuring party could be a dragon, a guy with a nuclear powered robot suit and... a hobo. Maybe more to the point, I've played in games where NPC wizards don't use spell slots or the spell lists in the books at all)
I am not necessarily implying that it needs to be balanced here, just that I would have expected it to be. Literature and folklore tend to give Evil the edge in making pacts with mortals, generally speaking.
DeleteSee also:
ReplyDeletehttp://kotgl.blogspot.ca/2008/11/my-old-flame-1st-edition.html
http://kotgl.blogspot.ca/2010/04/i-am-not-storyteller.html
Sorry about the .ca addresses... Google has decided to rewrite all my blogspot access URLs because I am in Canada.
Delete:-(
Don't apologize, I am almost in Canada myself :)
DeleteI agree with Brendon, I think Mike Mearls is generally sincere in his affection for TSR-era D&D. He is stuck with the unenviable position of trying to create a D&D that will "reunite the tribes", and frankly that ship has probably sailed. 4e is such a different game from its AD&D and OD&D roots that I don't see a way to create a game that will satisfy its fans as well as lapsed old schoolers. The things that are fun and exciting about 4e work against the things that are fun and exciting about AD&D or B/X, etc.
ReplyDeleteFor example: the recent discussions about save or die effects and overall lethality. You can only have save or die (or 0 hp = dead) in a game where it takes 5 minutes to roll up a new character. Because 4e characters take at least an hour to generate (and more than that if you really want to optimize a character), the game is designed so those characters will never die. It would just be too painful to create a new one. Whereas in B/X if I get bit by a giant spider and die, I can be back in the game in less than 10 minutes.
Likewise, the combats in 4e are so all-consuming (even a simple combat takes 45 minutes to an hour) that they suck all of the time out of a game session. This has two knock on problems: 1) you just don't have the time to have an old school focus on exploration - the atmosphere of a 4e game is totally different than a TSR era (or even 3.Xe) game. And 2) because those combat scenes are so central, the DM has an enormous incentive to carefully craft each encounter and railroad the players to each one of them.
I think 4e is a fun game, or at least that there are a lot of fun aspects to 4e. But those fun aspects don't play well with the fun aspects of earlier editions. Trying to create a game where all of those conflicting aspects can be in play at once seems like a fool's errand to me.
I can see the tough position he might be in, trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all version of D&D, WotC era D&D is very different in tone and focus from TSR era D&D, and TSR era D&D had two epochs of it's own EGG and post-EGG, which produced versions of D&D that, while compatible rules wise, were different in tone and focus. Both versions of WotC era D&D are different enough from each other that they managed to split their own fan base there, and both are different enough from TSR D&D that most TSR D&D fans have given up on WotC, so yeah, I think that trying to reunite the tribes is doomed to failure.
DeleteAll of that being said, my statement that Mike Mearls hates D&D was really more of a revelation than an impugning of his character. He has the disease of the fantasy heart breaker creating tinkerer, he's trying to make D&D better by fixing parts that aren't broken. Now, maybe he thinks he loves the game and he's just throwing in a few house rules, but I don't think so. Maybe he's trying to justify some changes that the rest of the design team already made and we're going to be stuck with whether we like them or not, provided they survive the beta-testing, and his column is just the WotC marketing department's way of slowly getting us used to the upcoming changes with the rationalizations attached to them, if that's the case then his job really kind of sucks and I feel bad for him.
I think the other aspect of 5E that we should keep in mind regarding what the WotC people write is that this new edition does have to be different enough to justify the new moniker. If they wanted to, they could just release any previous version of D&D with new art. That doesn't mean, of course, that we should buy or play 5E if it's not what we want, but I don't think it's crazy for them to experiment a little during this process. After all, we already have the old editions. We can play them forever. And thanks to the clones, everyone else has them too.
DeletePersonally, I feel like Moldvay B/X is just about the pinacle of D&D. There are many hardcore AD&D players for whom race as class is anathema. Some people love level limits and some people hate them, and that's even if you restrict your sample to relatively hardcore OSR gamers. Many people on the OD&D forums think the thief class does not belong in the game. Just within the comments on this post we have disagreement about level drain, and that's a pretty integral aspect of all TSR editions of D&D!
I don't think we should condemn him or claim that he doesn't "get it" because he uses some house rules or takes a differing approach to some mechanics.
I may have had a bit of a condemnatory tone, and I don't think he really gets the gist of old school gaming; his latest article about the one hour adventure is another example there, my post here was more about my realization that he hates the D&D system than any real defamation of his character though. I have played a lot of D&D with people that wanted to build a better system in one way or another because they hate the D&D system for one reason or another. Mostly they hate Vancian magic or abstract combat and want to improve it in one or more ways to make it more realistic, but sometimes they want to simplify it rather than make it more simulationist. The Clerics versus Undead article was what keyed me into the possibility that he was a D&D system hater though, because that's fixing a problem that really doesn't exist. I understand that they need to make a new and improved product to sell us, and, if it's good enough, I'll buy it and play it. I did with 3rd edition, and I bought partially into 3.5 before leaving the WotC bandwagon. I was on board to buy 4th edition when it came out, but saw the books before I paid any money for them and decided it wasn't for me, I was happy with my 1st edition AD&D game by then. I am not blind to the fact that there have been improvements in the state of the art though, and if the game is good, I'll be on board. The problem they have to work against here though is 3.x and 4.x editions of WotC D&D being a big break from the TSR, particularly the good, Gygax era, TSR tradition of D&D, and the playtest report that made it to the web doesn't look particularly promising, nor does Mike Mearls' continuing series of articles showing where the design team is headed. Now, don't get me wrong here, some good games have been made by people that were trying to fix what they saw as the problems of D&D, Chivalry & Sorcery, Rune Quest, Dragonquest, Pendragon, Arduin, pretty much every non-D&D fantasy role-playing game was an attempt to make D&D better; 4th edition D&D shouldn't be on that list, but it is, and 5th edition, when it arrives, shouldn't be either, but it looks like it probably will be. The early Arduin Grimoires were closer to D&D than 4th edition is.
DeleteId agree He keeps changing core systems almost out of spite instead of just streamlining and editing the rules for faster play (which is what i want - not to be bogged down by mountains of text/rules like in 3.5e and 4e). I dont care for him as lead designer. Im bummed Monte Cook left. Im really curious why Mearls is in charge and who made the choice to hire him. He did ok with iron heroes but thats about it imho.
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